If you own a company or business, you have probably noticed that Google Maps has become the modern YellowPages over the last couple years. With more and more people recycling the white and yellow pages as soon as they arrive on their doorstep, people no longer need the big bulky books with thousands of listings.

When a Google user searches for anything local they will see the Google Places listings. This is the new Yellow Pages and for any business that is trying to increase sales or leads not being listed in the top can seriously effect your bottom line.

Part of having a good listing in Google Maps or places is to have good/positive reviews for your business. Without them, and your prospective customer will will likely be calling your competitor instead. For this reason it’s essential to be pro-active with promoting your Google Places page and sometimes, asking or making a polite request for a Google review.

One of the problems with asking for reviews is that it seems like it can be a lot of work for a person that has never left a review before. It’s really pretty easy. A Google review can be completed in as little as 3 minutes from start to finish. Create a Gmail account, make a local search for the business you want to review, click on the link for the business you want to leave a review for and then leave the review.

To make it even easier on your customers, I’ve created an example email of what you can send to them so they can click on the link to your business and leave a review.

Example:

Nancy,

Thank you once again for choosing our company. I know that we discussed the possibility of you posting a review for us on Google. Since your time is valuable, I wanted to send you a link to our Google Places page. Here you can rate and review our business: